Everybody Loves Our Town_ An Oral History of Grunge - Mark Yarm [156]
DAVID KATZNELSON (Warner Bros. Records A&R vice president) When I found out Mudhoney were looking for another label, I immediately flew up to Seattle. I was this little schmo 21-year-old kid who is the biggest fan ever. I got thrown into the real chaos of the Mudhoney world that night. The first person I see is this raggedy, crazy-looking guy named Bob Whittaker who has hair everywhere and is wearing this big, thick green sweater. He told me, “The guys will see you soon. Come with me.” He takes me to his house in West Seattle where he has these crazy roommates—the kind of guys who’d shoot holes in walls with guns—and they start plying me with alcohol and throwing on single after single of all the Seattle bands.
Then I met the band. The only one who was kind of off-putting to me was Steve, and I think that’s because of his sarcastic, cynical wit. He’d be like, “Hey, where’s your American Express card? Aren’t you gonna buy us dinner?” And, “Are you gonna make us wear the prune suit?”—like the Electric Prunes, who the label forced to wear purple suits at one point in time.
GARRETT SHAVLIK The Fluid left Sub Pop about the same time Mudhoney left. We were getting hustled by Virgin and by Warner Bros., and then we went with Hollywood Records. We went on the road with Love Battery and toured for fuckin’ 14 weeks straight. Somewhere on the road coming back, some Hollywood execs flew in. They’re like, “What we’d love you to do is rent a house down in the Dallas/Fort Worth area, because that’s where Nevermind totally broke open on the radio. Go down there and just work that club circuit for a while, three or four months.” I went, “Fuck you, man. We’ve been fuckin’ touring since fuckin’ ’86.” They thought Dallas/Fort Worth was the pocket, man.
The Hollywood Records guys didn’t know about rock and roll. They knew about soundtracks for fuckin’ cartoons, Disney. Hollywood Records was in the Disney complex studio area, and all the boulevards are named after characters. They were on the corner of Dopey and Goofy boulevards. Really. Could this be a fuckin’ sign?
JACK ENDINO Major labels didn’t want to have anything to do with me. I was not the one who did the record that broke Nirvana. I was the guy who did the Nirvana record that said it was done for $600. That probably did not help my career. Most people didn’t even listen to the record because it said “made for $600.” They’d go, “Ha ha, next!”
PETER BUCK (guitarist of Athens, Georgia’s R.E.M.; Stephanie Dorgan’s ex-husband) I did an R.E.M. record in Seattle in ’92, Automatic for the People, and moved there in ’93. As an outsider, it seemed like things got really intense really quickly. Except for the B-52s and R.E.M., nobody from Athens got hugely successful, and there weren’t really bidding wars. It wasn’t seen that any band from Athens was gonna make a million dollars, but Seattle was like a gold rush.
RUSTY WILLOUGHBY (Flop/Pure Joy singer/guitarist) I’m sure if Flop were from Birmingham, Sony wouldn’t have touched us with a 10-foot pole. We were from Seattle, and we were doing relatively well on Frontier, an indie label. I think they thought we were grunge, and us being from Seattle is why they pulled the trigger. We would tell them that we weren’t grunge: “Don’t expect us to be Mudhoney.” But as much as they said, “Oh, yeah, sure,” they saw dollar signs. Even if they knew in their hearts that we weren’t grunge, they were going to market us like we were. It was always “Flop from Seattle.” Once they realized we weren’t grunge, they were more than happy to get rid of us, after just one record.
PETER BUCK Everyone was kind of conscious that the world was looking at them. Everyone felt embattled. The one thing I remember with a lot of pleasure is seeing that impromptu Nirvana show at the Crocodile, where they opened for Mudhoney.